Scared at bedtime, jealous, tantrums, too smart for a 4yo

The four year old has been a handful. I’ve clocked it at between six and eight hours a week are just spent dealing with an irrational psychotic rage beast, and about 50% of the days we would otherwise do something she’s grounded. This really sucks.

At the suggestion of a behaviorist we tried backing off a bit and picking our battles which made no difference as if we didn’t pick Battle 1 she would keep going until we picked something. It started escalating to hitting and kicking her sister in jealousy recently and it’s just gotten ridiculous.

We have another meeting with the behaviorist on Friday. I think this may be the last with this behaviorist as it’s not really getting us anywhere and it’s pretty pricey. We’re given next to no interaction, see no improvements, and are kept out of the room. According to Maggie they just play and talk about right ways to behave. We do this.

Still no leads on what takes normal Maggie into pick a fight and explode unable to calm down inferno.

I’m about to try melatonin or something as I’m beginning to think our 4yo who needs 10-14 hours of sleep is probably only getting 7. She’s never slept well, it was 8 months 17 days before she slept more than four hours in a row.

Bedtime’s a nonstop fight where she comes up with new and strange fears to get reassured about. It’s hippos now because when she was worried about lions or wolves she heard that hippos actually are a much more human-threatening animal. She’s now statistically correct scared.

40 minutes after bedtime she’s usually down, 80 minutes later she’s up to hit the bathroom or talk about a “dream” she had (checking cameras that dream was her playing with her toys in the dark). About midnight it’s the random woke up for no reason but can I lay here with you guys?

Seems like a behaviorist would check in and be like “is she sleeping ok?” and I’d be like – “hell no, how about we try something for a week to see if it does anything for behavior since you’re not getting anywhere?”

Ug. Need to get this fixed so I don’t feel like a jailor to my oldest and my house doesn’t get any more cracks in it from her kicking her door.